Chemex

An iconic brewer with a timeless design invented in 1941, the Chemex is easy to use and easy on the eyes. The Chemex is housed in the MOMA permanent design collection —it also lives on most of our kitchen counters, too. It brews a clean cup and maintains body and balanced floral notes.

What you need

Prep and preheat

Place the Chemex Filter in the brewer with single fold away from the spout and multiple folds lined up against the spout. Rinse the filter with hot water to get a nice even seal all the way around. This preheats the brewer and gets rid of any paper flavor from the filter. Dump the rinse water and fold the filter toward the spout to reinforce this area.

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Step 2

Weigh and grind coffee

Add 42g or about 6 Tablespoons of coffee ground kind of like Kosher salt. Center the coffee in your brewer and zero out the scale.

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Step 3

Saturate grounds

Start the timer when you add the hot water. Pour until all the grounds are saturated or until you reach about 150g. Stir with a chopstick or spoon to make sure there are no dry clumps.

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Step 4

Add more water

At :45, start the second pour, making sure to reintegrate the coffee and water. Pour with a wiggling motion, then a gentle spiral until the volume reaches about a fingertip down from the top of the rim or 450g of water. Pour over the dark spots and avoid the light ones.

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Step 5

Fill to the top

At 1:45, fill the brewer flush to the top or about 700g of water.

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Step 6

Wait for it to brew

At 4:00, you should be pretty close to volume. Look at the glass bubble or belly button, which indicates 20 ounces. Lift the filter. It’s okay to hover for a couple of seconds to make sure you have enough volume. Then pull the filter out completely and let it drain into the sink.

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Step 7

Serve and enjoy

Swirl the Chemex around a little and you’re ready to serve two cups of brewed coffee.